Chapter XXII

“You’ll agree, then, that she’s not dead,” Oliver had asked anxiously. “You’re willing to believe that she’s alive, hidden somewhere, and to come with me to search for her at Flimwel Grange?”

Mr. Spragge had agreed, for he believed that he had to deal, now, with a man not wholly in his right mind, and he feared for Oliver Sellar’s reason if he were strenuously opposed. He believed that the only help he could give him and Ambrosia would come from gaining his confidence and proving himself a friend to these wild fancies and delusions which Oliver Sellar cherished.

Ambrosia had taken him aside and protested about this expedition--protested against his self-sacrifice in accompanying Oliver on a night like this, with such a storm abroad, and to that lonely house.

“It is not far away,” said the old man, “and I have often been out in a storm before; and I am quite well and stalwart, and if we take the thing reasonably, it will harm neither of us. Why, my dear, it is but a question of a mile-and-a-half drive, and looking over an empty house.”

“But what good will it do Oliver?” she urged. “It is only encouraging him!”

“It will get me into the confidence of Oliver. Who knows but that I may be able to say a word in season, and to persuade him to some peace and tranquillity?”

Ambrosia did not reply. She gave orders for a hasty meal to be prepared, for Oliver would not wait till the usual dinner-time; and then she returned to her drawing-room and took out her sewing. So she was to be left again--even the old clergyman was to be swept into this wild search for Fanny. She must sit there alone by the fireside--pondering, wondering, examining her own heart, struggling with her own feelings.…

Oliver had taken Mr. Spragge into his own private room--that little closet beyond the dining-room where he had interviewed Fanny the last time that he had spoken to her; the room where he now always passed the brief time that he was in his house.

On the bureau were the cases containing his mother’s jewels, which Ambrosia had handed to Fanny, and Luisa, the Italian maid, had handed back on her mistress’s disappearance. Among them, though Mr. Spragge did not know this, was the heavy engagement ring which he had given Fanny in Italy, and a necklace of Etruscan gold, and a _rivière_ of diamonds which he had purchased for her in Paris.

The two rooms which she had occupied during her short stay at Sellar’s Mead were now locked up, and Oliver kept the keys with these other treasures. He had given severe orders that nothing was to be touched; none of her possessions was to be put away. All the fal-lals and trifles left upon her dressing-table, her clothes still hanging in the press, her shoes on the floor, her vases and ornaments in the places where she had left them.…

When he had given these orders, he had said:

“At any moment she may come back, at any second she may return; and everything must be in readiness.”

Now he rang the bell, as was his usual evening custom, and, when the maid came, gave her the key of these apartments, saying:

“See that all is prepared, and a large fire lit. It may be that to-night the Countess Fanny comes home. I am going abroad, and possibly I shall bring her back with me.”

Mr. Spragge listened in dismay to these instructions, which the maid received with respectful impassiveness.

When she had gone, Oliver took a piece of paper from his pocket, and showed it to the clergyman.

It contained a list of the clothes the Countess Fanny was wearing on the day of her disappearance.

“Two of them are here--two of those items,” said Oliver; and he opened a drawer in the bureau. Mr. Spragge observed, with a shudder, the crushed straw bonnet with the wreaths of dark-red flowers, and the torn, pale cashmere shawl which Fanny had worn the day she had disappeared.

“Those were found on the rocks, you know,” said Oliver. “She’d been walking on the rocks, and cast them down. It was her manner, you know, to take off her bonnet whenever she could, and let the wind blow through her hair. But, for the rest, she wore these.”

And his heavy hand and pointing finger indicated to the clergyman the list carefully compiled from Luisa’s instructions as to the attire of the lost girl.

“A dress of dark-green cloth with steel buttons, and underclothing of Indian lawn with Valenciennes lace; a tippet of blue and white striped sarcenet with a silk fringe; a cameo brooch, set in foliated gold, and carved with a head of Medusa; a pair of bracelets and a necklace, in wrought coral, fashioned to appear like grapes, and set in gold; a comb to match; a rosary of gilt beads and lapis; a reticule--yellow velvet--containing beads, handkerchief, a half-finished purse of netted silk, some charms and holy medallions.”

The clergyman read the piteous list. He did not know what to say, yet plainly Oliver was waiting for him to speak.

“None of these things has been found,” he faltered.

“No,” said Oliver, “not one.”

“How should they be?” thought Mr. Spragge, with deep pity, “when they are all with her at the bottom of the sea?” And he marvelled at any passion being deep enough to create so bottomless a hope as that nourished by Oliver Sellar. And he noted that the unfortunate man was drinking heavily.

He hardly touched the food that was brought him, but the wine he drank in copious glassfuls, one after the other. No doubt he had been drinking like this ever since the girl was lost. He foresaw a dark future for Oliver Sellar if the Countess Fanny was not found; and indeed it was impossible that she should be found.

Then a fantastic thought came into the old man’s mind. Supposing, by some miracle, that she _was_ found; what then would the situation be? She had run away from Oliver--that was clear enough. So that, even if she returned, as it were from the grave, what use to this dark, tormented man sitting beside him, since she would reject him? Better, almost for Oliver Sellar that the Countess Fanny should be dead!

They set out on their senseless journey, and the old man bowed and shuddered a little, used as he was to tempestuous weather, at the blasts of the wind that blew up out of the darkness and smote him as he waited on the porch for the carriage. What a night and what an errand!

The stout horses and the willing coachman, knowing the road so well, and skilful in his driving, soon brought them through the tearing wind and the onslaught of the rain to the gates of Flimwel Grange, which lay just beyond the confines of the estate of Oliver Sellar, who rented the house with the land, but had never troubled to endeavour to find a tenant for it, nor for years crossed its threshold.

When the Countess Caldini, Fanny’s mother, had been asked what she wished done with the house where she had spent her own childhood, and of which she was now the sole heiress, she had replied indifferently enough from Italy, saying it might be shut up until such good time as she could return to England, where it was always her intention, she had declared, to return sooner or later; but she had been absorbed in the troubles of her distracted country--the shifting policies and incipient rebellions of Rome and Florence and Turin--and she had never come back to her native country, though it had been her dying wish that her daughter should do so, and for that reason she had left Oliver Sellar as her child’s guardian, hoping that he would take her back to Cornwall.

Mr. Spragge could remember when the Grange had been inhabited. He had come to St. Nite’s just before the marriage of the Englishwoman to the Italian, whom she had met in London during her first and only season there.

The Count Caldini had come to England to endeavour to rouse interest in the cause of the Italian patriots, and, in the drawing-room of some well-wisher to his cause, he had met the beautiful young Cornishwoman and married her immediately, and taken her away, never wishing her to return; and soon after the father and mother had died, and the Grange had been shut up.

Flimwel Grange was an ugly and pretentious house, recently built on the site of an old mansion, some parts of which yet remained; but the façades were of sham Gothic, heavy and gloomy, with a square tower at one side.

Beneath this tower was an archway, and there they left the carriage and horses in some sort of a shelter. The driving rain was incessant, and the wind seemed to increase in volume every moment.

Oliver had the keys and a lantern, and Mr. Spragge, bending before the gale, followed him round to the front door.

Oliver flashed the lantern over the blank façade of the house. All the windows were shuttered.

“Surely,” thought the clergyman to himself, “he has, indeed, lost his wits to suppose that the poor child can be in there, or can, indeed, ever have been in there! What a madman’s quest is this!” And he almost regretted his complaisance in accompanying Oliver Sellar on such a journey.

But Oliver was already unlocking the front door, and Mr. Spragge was glad to follow him, even into the gloom of that deserted mansion; for it was some shelter against the rising rain and the cold wind.

He wondered, as Oliver closed the door behind him, to whom the house now really belonged. He was not quite sure who was the heir of the Countess Fanny--but Italian, no doubt; the uncle or the cousin; and he thought uneasily, as the Earl had thought, that these people should be apprised of the death of their young relation, and informed as to their inheritance of her property.

Oliver held the lantern aloft, and in the long beam looked up the stairs, which rose straightly before them, and disappeared into darkness.

“I should hardly have recognised the place,” murmured Mr. Spragge. “How different it looks from when I last saw it! They had it very prettily furnished, I used to think, and kept it very well.”

“The furniture was sold,” said Oliver absently, “and the proceeds sent to the Countess Caldini. She always wanted money for her husband’s cause. Fanny, you know, has not very much.”

This was the first time the clergyman had heard the dower of the Countess Fanny referred to.

Oliver continued:

“Her cousin and her uncle inherit the estate, and she has nothing but a little money in cash and this estate. It is not worth such a very great deal.”

He still spoke in a distracted tone, and seemed entirely absorbed in gazing up those empty, dusty stairs.

Mr. Spragge was glad that he had said this, for it did show that at least he had had no mercenary motive in his ill-judged and hasty engagement.

“We will search every room,” said Oliver. “Do you go one way, and I another.”

“We have only one lantern,” objected Mr. Spragge, “and I can scarcely hope to find anything in the dark. Let us go together, sir; the house is not so large, and we have ample time.”

“Very well,” assented Oliver, “we’ll begin on the ground floor. There are two drawing-rooms and a parlour or so, I believe; it is long since I was in the house, and I have forgotten.”

He opened the door on his right as he spoke, and Mr. Spragge accompanied him on this sombre, and to the old man useless, pilgrimage.

It did not take long to satisfy even Oliver that no one was lurking in the rooms, for they were completely unfurnished and square, without any recesses or cupboards. The one object in each was the ponderous stone mantelpiece, and all was open and bare to the most casual scrutiny. Perhaps, hoped Mr. Spragge, this emptiness would give him some manner of shock, and prove to him the futility of this dismal search.

Oliver trudged impatiently from one room to another, disturbing the dust and sometimes the rats and mice, who scampered away at the sound of his noisy tread. Everything was covered with dust; in some places the plaster had fallen; in others the damp had come in, and lay in an ugly green-black blotch, bloomed with mildew, all over the drab-coloured walls.

Oliver flashed his lantern into every corner. He tried the shutters; they were all firmly bolted, and it was quite clear, from the thickness of the dust upon the sills, that they had not been recently disturbed.

“Let us go upstairs,” said Oliver grimly. “After that we will go down into the basement, the kitchens and cellars.”

“As you please,” said Mr. Spragge. He was again struggling against that pervading miasma of despair and gloom, like the breath of a demon, given out by the tormented personality of Oliver; here, alone with him in this empty and gloomy house, he felt it even more strongly than he had felt it in the comfortable drawing-room at Sellar’s Mead. The man was possessed, surely!

Mr. Spragge thought there was something monstrous in his looks--something dark and menacing and inhuman, almost as grotesque and horrible as the big, wavering shadows cast behind him by the lantern that he carried; the jet black hair and whiskers, with those plumes of white upon the forehead, that grimly set face and those sunken, flashing eyes; the whole aspect of the man inspired the clergyman, not only with aversion, but almost with terror.

They went upstairs, and the boards creaked beneath their tread.

“She was interested in this place, you know,” said Oliver quickly, and more as if speaking to himself than caring about his companion; “she even wanted to live here. She asked me to bring her over to see it, but I never did.”

“She would wish to see her mother’s house, of course,” replied the clergyman feelingly. “That would be natural enough.”

“And she might have come here,” insisted Oliver, looking down with a grin over his shoulder, at the clergyman following--a demoniacal grin, Mr. Spragge thought, with a shudder in his heart. “Why should she not have come here? That would have been a natural place for her to hide, would it not--her mother’s old home?”

This was so horrible and so grotesque that the clergyman decided not to reply to it. How impossible to point out to one of the temper and mood of Oliver Sellar the absurdity of anyone hiding in the house and surviving there for three weeks. And he began to speculate as to what Oliver Sellar would do when he discovered that he had been cheated in his hopes yet once again; when the disappointment of finding the house empty indeed broke upon him with full force. Would he lose control and have some fit, some seizure? Would he be thrown into an even deeper gloom, an even more sombre despair? Or would he, Mr. Spragge, be able to enforce on him a lesson of resignation and fortitude?

The clergyman endeavoured to brace himself so that he could give strength and consolation to this soul in torment. But how futile seemed all his possible administrations to one so frantically possessed as Oliver Sellar!

Now they must make a progress through the upper rooms, one after another, flashing the lantern’s long beams into the corners, fingering the dust on the sills, looking at the rusty bolts in the shutters, flinging open empty cupboards and gazing into the blackness therein.

“I meant to have furnished this as a wedding-present for her,” said Oliver. “I could have made it very pretty, could I not, sir? The rooms would really be charming.” And he grinned again. “Think of them, done up with silver paper and sprigged muslin, with roses here and there. Could they not be made very delightful to a young lady’s taste?”

“God have pity on you!” thought Mr. Spragge, with deep compassion.

“She should have had a whole suite to herself,” continued Oliver, speaking rapidly. “With an aviary. She would have liked that--gilded wire cages, with pretty birds in them, like she had in Italy; and flowers always. There is a good soil, here at Flimwel. I could have grown a number of flowers--under glass, of course, sir. She loved exotics.”

“Yes, yes, this a very fine house,” said Mr. Spragge hastily. “Very fine indeed, no doubt.”

“I will have the decorators in to-morrow,” cried Oliver. “I will send to London, to Paris, for painters and gilders. I will give it to her as a wedding-present--eh?”

“I beseech you, sir,” cried Mr. Spragge, laying a hand on his arm, “to control yourself, and speak reasonably. You should not have come to this place--perhaps I was wrong to sanction it.”

“We are to be married in April, you know,” replied Oliver wildly, “but I think by April they can have it ready, can they not?”

They had now entered another room, and Oliver gave a sudden fierce exclamation.

“What’s that?” he cried.

A small object was lying in the middle of the floor, and as Oliver seemed incapable of moving, Mr. Spragge hurried forward and picked it up. It was a small coral bracelet, wrought in a design of grapes and vine-leaves.